History lives on at World War II base

Buildings on FAU campus to be restored

Boca Raton — In hindsight, Robert Davey thinks his washout from U.S. Army pilot training in 1944 was fixed.

That's how he ended up on a remote Army airfield base in Boca Raton, training in a new, ultra-secret technology from Great Britain called radar.

It was a rural, concrete and barbed wire campus that operated for five pivotal years between 1942 and 1947. Young troops would answer to their serial numbers by calling out their last name, and students attended class without notebooks or pens. Instead, everything was memorized.

Davey and his fellow radar operators later realized that they had been handpicked for their abilities to keep quiet, retain what they learned, and perform a significant role with this new, see-in-the-dark equipment that helped the Allies win World War II.

"It was a very hush-hush type of thing," said Davey, 81, of Pompano Beach. "If you were found with a paper or pen in your possession, you were brought up on court-martial."

The air base is almost gone now, lost to time, the campus of Florida Atlantic University and Hurricane Wilma. One building, lovingly restored last year at the neighboring Florida Research Park, burned down within weeks of being completed.

In mid-February, the crumbling remains of two more of the so-called T-buildings were taken down by FAU, much to the dismay of the Boca Raton Army Air Field Preservation Society, which wants to save as much of the remaining base as possible.

Four buildings remain visible now at the edge of the FAU campus, and two others are hidden away on the outskirts of the campus, said Sally Ling, the former chairwoman of the group and author of Small Town, Big Secrets: Inside the Boca Raton Army Air Field During World War II.

The group has won a promise from the university to leave those buildings standing.

"The buildings themselves are not as significant as the context in which they operated," Ling said. "The base was steeped in secrecy. If the Germans had ever gotten hold of this, it would have been over for all of us. We'd be speaking German now."

Tom Donaudy, FAU's architect and interim vice president of facilities, said the university was committed to preserving all four remaining buildings on campus.

"It's cheaper to build new buildings, but because of the historical nature, we are committed to restoring these buildings, as the money comes in," Donaudy said. "I think we all see meaning in the buildings. That's why we are intent to repair the buildings."

Right now, the university has allocated about $500,000 to put new roofs on the remaining buildings. An application for state grant money last year was turned down, but the preservation group and university hope that the effort will attract grant money.

In early March, just two weeks after the buildings were taken down, Donaudy took the group members and a preservation architect on a walking tour of the remaining four buildings, old masonry structures with concrete floors and wood gabled roofs.

The group's president, Amy An, said she envisioned a museum area in one of the buildings that would include a place to relax, the airfield's history and even a booth for National Public Radio's Story Core, in which people record their own stories.

The buildings could also be used for student projects, she said.

"We'd be interested in doing something like that," Donaudy said. He agreed to work with the group to seek funding.

The group began talks with the university about retrieving the windows and trims from the buildings slated for demolition and using them in the other restorations.

An estimated 100,000 troops came through the air base during the war, some training to fly B-17s, and thousands learning radar in six-hour classes that went on in four daily shifts, round-the-clock.

With hundreds of buildings, the base was segregated, including barracks and mess halls.